Thursday, October 25, 2012

MoFo 25: My Favorite Salad Dressing

I enjoy eating salad, but it can sort of be a pain in the butt to make it. So much washing and chopping and spinning lettuce and so on. Plus, you gotta make the dressing, which is a whole other project. Despite my tendency toward complete sloth, we have salad at least twice a week for dinner. Years ago, I settled on one particular recipe as my favorite salad dressing. It comes together quickly, and you can make it all in one big jar without having to get a blender dirty or anything too complicated like that. It lasts a couple weeks at least, so we can make a big batch and use it for a couple weeks' worth of salad nights. Also, in my experience, it just gets better and better as the flavors meld together. It's actually worth the effort!

The original recipe came from a great book called "Becoming Vegan," but Mr Vegan Eats & Treats wasn't crazy about the spices in the original recipe. Even though he never cooks, he has a much better palate for combining flavors than I do. So, he switched up all the spices and we came up with this recipe. Just last night he suggested that maybe we should add a little mustard to our next batch - so we'll try that next time!

Flaxseed Oil Salad Dressing

makes 2 1/4 cups

1/2 cup flaxseed oil

1/2 cup water

1/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

1/4 cup low sodium tamari sauce

1/2 cup nutritional yeast

1 teaspoon dried dill

1/2 teaspoon dried basil

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano

1/4 teaspoon dried thyme

1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder

Instructions: Measure everything and put it all in a big jar with a good lid. Shake it up a bunch. Pour it on your salad!

This is a doodle of me bathing in a vat of salad dressing, which Mr. VE&T says is too gross of an idea and that I shouldn't put it on my blog! Just try and stop me! ha ha ha ha!

25 comments:

I'm pretty sure I've made this dressing from the book too, but your version of it sounds better! And having a good dressing handy would be, well, handy...too many times I just whip up a small amount of something random and call it a dressing. And as much as I love a good dressing, I don't think I would bathe in it, ha ha. :)

Was this originally the Liquid Gold dressing? If so, I made a huge vat of it 5 years ago when I went vegan, and it wasn't a total success. I remember feeling so bummed that I'd spent all that money on flax oil, a huge tin of nutritional yeast, and whatnot. That being said, I'd really like to try Mr. VE&T's version. I like everything in the ingredient list, and I'm more of a nutritional yeast fan now than I was back then. I love that adorable drawing of you bathing in the dressing, smacking your lips! Super cute! My go-to dressing is a cilantro & garlic cashew-based dressing, and I love having it on hand. My husband gets tired of it sometimes, but I'm happy to eat it every day!

Cadry! YEs! that's totally the one. if you do try this, let me know what you think. I'd love to try out your recipe too. It's so helpful just to have a standard recipe that's quick and easy. Otherwise, I'll get all lazy about making the dressing and the salad will just never happen!

Yes, the most complicated part of this whole recipe is juicing the lemons. I am so lazy that even this step can annoy me. I have to actually GO OUTSIDE to pick some lemons, and then juice them. Oh, it's so much work. :) But at least I only have to do it every couple of weeks. (to be fair - salad nights are the nights when I don't get home from teaching until 9 pm, so I am always really tired. that's part of why I am so lazy about making salad dressing!)

Kittee Bubs! If you try it, let me know what you think! You can change the spices up any way you want, and of course you can change the type of vinegar too. I really like that it has flax oil too, it makes me feel virtuous. Between the flax oil and the nooch, this is a real Vegan Dressing for sure.

It's kind of silly how excited I am about this salad dressing. Flax oil is one of my favorites for topping vegetables, plus I've been on a dill bender lately... And nooch is just like cat nip to vegans. So happy you shared the recipe!

I make a similar dressing from E2 and it is so good, it's just sans oil. I am glad you ignored Mr. V and posted the really cute pic of you bathing in salad dressing. Do you smell like a salad or is your skin just super hydrated now?

Ooh, this sounds great! We also eat quite a few salads, but buying dressing can get sooo spendy (even though there are some very tasty ones out there).

Your doodles are great. I especially like your title banner, it puts my cloud banner to shame. Thanks for checking out my blog, I'm glad you like my work. I'm going to have to add you to my feed reader, I think we have very similar tastes!

I love hearing about other people's go-to salad dressings. I tend to make the same one over and over and over because it's easy and there's only like 4 or 5 ingredients. I tend to avoid the ones that make things other then a jar dirty.I don't typically buy flax oil but I'm totally going to pick some up to try this, I need more salads in my life!

Sounds yummy. I should expand my salad dressing horizons and instead of making the same one over and over, I should make yours. I just want to say how much I've been enjoying your illustrations. They capture so much in so few lines — clearly the work of a skilled artist!